The application of heat, typically using oil baths, heating elements, or microwaves, has emerged as a tool in the automated chemical synthesis industry. Microwave heating in particular has grown in popularity in recent years, due to the speed with which small volumes can be raised to elevated temperatures.
While microwaves offer rapid heating, there are also a number of considerable disadvantages associated with this technology. All commercial single-mode microwave reactors currently available allow irradiation of only a single vessel. Thus it is not possible to perform microwave synthesis of multiple peptides in parallel. Furthermore, limitations in the reaction vessel and mixing options available on microwave synthesizers make scale-up of microwave conditions practically difficult.